Consumers are experiencing an ever-increasing choice in the manner in which to purchase consumer products. In addition to the traditional telephone mail order shopping, Internet-based commerce, i.e., e-commerce, now offers the convenience of shopping from home. On-line websites selling consumer goods typically offer a range of sizes, colors, models, and so forth, from which the consumer can select. However, in most instances, the provider is targeting the broadest possible group of consumers. Such mass marketing typically limits the ability of the consumer to purchase products that are particularly suited for his or her needs.
Within the food industry, conventional mass marketing results in products having generic ingredients tied to a particular product or form, such as ready-to-eat (RTE) cereal and snack products. However, as consumers grow increasingly aware of their own health concerns, and the role food can play in impacting these conditions, many are limiting or avoiding foods that contain excess fats, sugars, allergens and so forth, which can negatively impact their health. This often results in limited loyalty to any particular brand of cereal or snack product, likely because no one brand is seen as doing a superior job of meeting a consumer's needs over another. For example, even though there are over 300 RTE cereal stock keeping units (SKU) in the American grocery trade, no one SKU has greater than approximately five (5)% consumer share.
In addition to health concerns, consumers are also developing increasingly sophisticated tastes. The coffee industry, for example, has experienced tremendous growth recently as consumers have developed a taste for specialty coffees.
Meeting the diverse health and taste needs of individual consumers is simply not possible with conventional mass marketing. Traditional retailing further prevents the food industry from meeting these needs by limiting the number of SKU's carried by retailers, due, in many cases, to limited shelf space. Moreover, the current and well-established paradigm of ready-to-eat cereal and snack manufacturing and distribution has had the effect of directing attention away from considering alternative or different approaches in this area. What is needed, therefore, is a system and method of providing food products that can meet the varied needs of each individual consumer.